Anti-Piracy Operations: Game On?

Share

Anti-Piracy Operations: Game On?

A standoff in the Indian Ocean is continuing after an attack by Somali pirates on a U.S.-flagged container ship. Pirates fled the ship after they were overpowered by the vessel's crew, but the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, is being held hostage in a lifeboat. The destroyer USS Bainbridge is tracking the lifeboat; the Navy has now summoned the FBI's hostage rescue experts.

This is reportedly the first time a U.S.-flagged ship has been attacked by pirates in 200 years; it will be a major test of the U.S. Navy's determination to quell piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

Back in January, Rear Adm. Terry McKnight, head of the pirate-fighting Combined Task Force 151, boasted that the ships under his command had been successful in curbing piracy off of Somalia's coast. Pointing to a drop in hijackings in December after a spike last fall, he said: "The pirates know we're out here, so they're going to try their best to avoid us."

Over the past few weeks, however, there has been a surge of pirate activity. Reuters says pirates attacked least 15 vessels off the coast of Somalia in March; five of those attacks occured over the last eight days. And as Bloomberg notes, ships have almost always been released in exchange for a ransom; the only ship to be freed by force was a French vessel seized by French commandos in September.

So is a ransom in this case inevitable? Or will the U.S. Navy pursue the French option? Perhaps both. Revisiting the French anti-pirate raid, David Axe noted that the assault took place after hostages were released. Once ransom money changed hands, commandos moved in and sniped the engine of the pirate's getaway boat. The point of the raid, The Independentsuggested, was to prove that piracy doesn't pay.

Incidentally, the container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was carrying humanitarian aid destined for the port of Mombasa, Kenya. Voice of America reports that the pirate attack held up a World Food Program shipment hat included corn-soya blend for malnourished children and mothers in Somalia and Uganda and vegetable oil for Kenyan refugees.